Jump to content

Menu

English credit-what makes up one full credit?


Recommended Posts

What objectives would need to be met to earn one full credit in high school English? (I'm thinking of 9th grade in particular.)

For example, the student will have...

read (?) number of books

studied grammar from a high school level text

used something for composition

wrote (?) number of essays

Etc.

What would you expect from your 9th grader for one credit in English?

I'm trying to create an outline for what we will do for dd.

Thanks!

Edited by Kfamily
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was interested to see what sort of replies you got but since no one else has said anything, I will. I don't think I can answer the question you asked, but I can tell you what I'm doing this year. It's partly based on WTM suggestions. My 9th grader has worked through the Grammar portion of Abeka's 9th grade grammar (Sorry, I can't think what it's called right now), he's doing Classical Writing's Diogenes: Chreia and we're doing Great Books with Omnibus. I do not normally assign the Abeka writing excercises, although we are working on a few of them now since we were able to finish the rest of the book before the end of the year. We do only a few of the Omnibus writing exercises, when they seem worthwhile to me. Portions of CW have required reading of Strunk & White's Elements of Style.

 

At the end of the year, he will have earned 1 English credit. He's read lots of books (I do keep a log) and he'll have written lots of compositions (summaries, descriptions, essay's in praise of this or that) and he'll have had yet another year of grammar rules under his belt.

 

I believe the quality of the books (and discussion &/or writing about them) is more important than the quantity of books.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't offer a tried and tested answer, we will be doing this for 9th grade next year as well. But I can share what we are planning and why.

 

The consistent response I hear/read about assigning credits is 130 to 180 hours work time and/or completion of the text/program.

 

I found in planning this guideline flies out the window for 9th grade Lit/Comp (English) for us. I can foresee easily exceeding 180 hours and we don't intend to use a single curriculum. This is the year to firm up areas Dd will need over the following three years (strong composition skills, grammar, vocabulary, literature providing the fodder of allusions, a bit more spelling reinforcement and so forth). Although it will be more time (7/8 as opposed to 5 hours a week), I see this as a chance to solidify skills earlier in the process to make the later years refinining/practice years.

 

Thus, I sat down and pretended that time or book completion was not the question and asked instead what do we need/want to accomplish in composition and literature this upcoming year. Doing so it was clear time in the schedule to meet the those goals was needed. It meant postponing an elective, but for us it felt worth it to really beef up this skill area early in the process.

 

Math, Lit/Comp and Science will dominate the time schedule for the year. History, Spanish and Latin will be done, meet either means of measuring credits, but in terms of time I have been much more reserved in the goals for them for this particular year.

 

Hopefully you will get lots of responses from the experienced/btdt posters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do not find setting a goal of a specific number of books or essays useful, because not all books are created equal and not all essays are equal either. The Inferno certainly counts differently than Animal Farm.

I can tell you what we did.

In 9th grade, we studied Ancients. So we assembled a reading list of the most important works and resources to study them. We worked thoroughly and managed to cover a large portion of the list, but by no means everything.

(Just in case you are interested, this is what DD read: Ilia, odyssey, Aeneid, tragedies, Metamorphoses, Herodotus)

After 150 hours of work I awarded a credit for English (actually, we spent 300 hours on English and history combined, because with out setup it was impossible to separate the two; I split it in half for one credit each).

 

This year, we are doing something similar with Medieval/Renaissance. We study some important works and work as far as we get. Credit is given for about 150 hours of work.

ETA: I do not count free reading and creative writing towards the credit; DD also spends a large amount of time discussing literature online.

Edited by regentrude
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Suzannah! And thanks to everyone else too. I posted this before seeing the other responses.

 

This does help. My dd is supposed to be in 9th already (grade/age wise) but because of several moves recently (the last one being to another country) we have fallen behind. She is still finishing up 8th grade level work. My dh, dd and I have discussed this and we've decided that we are removing labels from her for now. She is an 8th/9th grader as best we can explain. We will just continue each year as needed. If we find that she has caught up by the end of her high school years, then all will be well. (And I'm thinking we will arrange her transcipt by subject.) If we feel we need to add another year or half of a year, then we will do this.

I'm planning on having her earn her first credit roughly December of this year in Latin (1.0 credit). Considering all that we have been doing and all that I plan to have her finish by December of this year, I think we will have an English credit as well. I'm looking at what I need to add to what we are doing and what we need to have completed by December of this year to accomplish that credit.

 

Here is where we are:

Practical English (There are 2 volumes with a total of 27 chapters. This is a very solid grammar course with diagramming included.)I hope to have one volume complete. We are part way into volume 1 now.

CW Maxim (we are using now) and CW Chreia (We will finish by Dec.)

SAT vocabulary flashcards (Just started this)

Dictation (paragraphs)

Literary terms (with Figuratively Speaking and Prose & Poetry) We're fairly well into these too.

Find the Errors (Proofreading Activities) (This is new but we have from now to Dec.)

 

Literature studied (as in not what she read independently) will include:

Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves

Shakepeare's sonnets

Julius Caesar

Merchant of Venice

poetry from John Donne and Milton

Iliad

Odyssey

Bacon's Essays

Alexander Pope (essay and poetry)

 

Other books we plan to study but could change:

Pride and Prejudice

something by Dickens

maybe Count of Monte Cristo

more poetry

Aeschylus and/or Sophocles

These were planned, but I'm leaving this open still......:lol:

 

I know we will cover essays in CW, and I will tie more essays to the literature.

I want to give her one credit based on this. Do I need anything else to make this a full credit?

 

P.S. We school year round anyway, but this summer will be especially busy to help catch us up.

 

Thanks.:001_smile:

Edited by Kfamily
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I went to a small private school for high school. We did the following in 9th grade:

 

1/3-1/2 of the grammar text used all four years for lessons and reference.

Read 4 novels, wrote an essay or did a project for each novel.

We read one Shakespeare play aloud in class.

We had a lit book that we uses for poetry, short story, and other studies.

We worked on developing our research skills with short papers and a practice bibliography.

 

We did most of our composition development in 10th grade. 9th grade was solidified grammar skills and lots of reading.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't have hard and fast rules on this. English is my thing. In addition, it is something that comes easily to both of my kids. So, I feel fairly confident winging it.

 

However, what I usually do when I feel like I need more guidance is to start poking around online for syllabi and reading lists so I can get a feel for what is typical in schools. Then, I aim to do at least a little more.

 

This year, which we're calling ninth grade, my son has:

 

- read 14 full books and plays, plus excerpts of others.

- reviewed grammar by reading and discussing Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

- used IEW for composition.

- written essays/reports about half of the books and plays he has read.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...